Technology adds quality of life but also creates new obstacles, Geneva Association deputy secretary general Walter Stahel will tell Ferma's forum.

“Technology isolates people in mental cubicles,” Stahel says.

“Technological efficiency can lead to new risks due to irrational behaviour in qualified jobs.”

However, he warns businesses can not take on major challenges, like sustainability, simply by moralising relations relationships with their stakeholders.

He says professional activities needed to be performed in the “context of a macro-economic and social perspective.

“Risk management and sustainability have similar objectives,” Stahel says.

“They focus on loss and waste prevention, they have an integrated holistic approach to problem solving and they share a belief that prevention is better than cure. They also contradict many beliefs in economics.

“Economy of scale means diseconomy of risk, creating new catastrophic risks and the effectiveness of prevention cannot be measured in terms of productivity.”

Stahel will lead the Ferma workshop with Georg Fischer Risk Management managing director Manfred Swysen, Ciba Specialist Chemical's Peter Donath and Kathleen Dwyer of Zurich Financial Services.